Contemporary Japanese Visual Culture, the Otaku and the mirror of desire.

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Full metal shoujo

Usotsuki Lily’s Ayumi Komura has had a new series out for this year. The follow your heart/ follow your dreams love triangle; Full Dozer is already ending/ ended at 3 volumes, but must not be missed – if your tastes run to being hit repeatedly on the head with a shoujo stick.

I guess mine now do. I feel like I’ve been run over with a shoujo bulldozer – by an expert. This thing is a shoujo wave-motion gun. Or a very well-made shoujo chocolate cheesecake laced with opioids. Or a shoujo wave motion gun that shoots shoujo chocolate opioid cheesecake at you. Uuurrrpp!

What the ^&%! hit me?

There aren’t any overt carry-overs from Uso Lily in it and wrapping it up after a short run is a bit of a shame but it looks like it was planned that way so it would make a nice self-contained story. As usual, the drawing style is all wispy hair, big, big expressive eyes and fine, strong lines in the artwork. The characters have emotion and conflict and faults but surprising reserves of good will that elevate (and hasten the end of) the story.

D’Awwwwwwwwwww!

Meanwhile, Uso Lily’s most earnest tribute band -urm- series, Mizutama Honey Boy continues to push all the same levers as far as they will go, so no one who finds themselves jones-ing for improbable syrupy teen romcom snacks will go too hungry. Kendo Girl of Versailles is impressive.

And for those of us who either or also prefer more realistic fare, It looks like Stretchwrapped up at four volumes. Very adult, good stretching tips, A clean ending that didn’t suddenly turn on the yuri to get some last-minute service in. (well, maybe just a teeny bit right at the end, but no one threw themselves off a railway bridge or anything) I never saw any fetish fuel in it, but then chacun a son gout.

Life is good!

(…and, finally went through this entire blog and excised all the idiosyncratic spellings of shoujo, dammit. That felt like work. Shoujo, shoujo, shoujo dammit! Done! Whew!)

One thought on “Full metal shoujo”

I’ve always appreciated the thankfully brief runs (pace Garasu no kamen) of most shojo manga. It gives the sense of a contained and complete story rather than just an endless series of narrative arcs that largely repeat the same formula with different characters (though always the same types). Not to mention, in shojo romance/slice of life titles, there is a keen sense of the ephemeral and the passage of time, which a long run, I think, would completely obliterate.